The Magic Rainforest: An Amazon Journey beats with the heart of a kid-size hero’s journey. It’s the story of a child with a destiny he tries to resist but which he ultimately embraces with the help of mentors along the way.

The tone of Cara Mía Theatre Co.’s regional premiere at Latino Cultural Center wavers at times, as if unsure if the target audience is kids, teens or adults. But when it takes off, it soars like the irresistible toucan puppet crafted and operated by Frida Espinosa-Müller.

Thirteen-year-old Aki (Ricco Fajardo) is tired of listening to the silly tales told by his uncle, Wakote (Joe Chapa), who gives his orphaned nephew a magical emerald necklace and tells him he’s destined to become a shaman. Aki rolls his eyes as Wakote tells the boy his father was an encantado, a magical being, who fell in love with Aki’s mortal mother, who was killed by a fire demon.

Aki would rather fight than heal, but when a fire demon ravages his village, Aki sets off to seek his uncle’s help. What he finds instead is greedy Pereira (Dean Wray), who steals Aki’s necklace and burns the rain forest to generate bare land to sell for farms and ranches.

Trapped with animals (with comic relief from Chapa as sleepy Sloth and Ana Gonzalez as a turtle with delusions of speed), Aki learns the power of his gifts. His ability to communicate with animals and vegetables, including sassy yam, potato and squash puppets that kept kids giggling Friday night, helps him prevail.

The show opens a bit confusingly, with composer and one-man onstage band, Fabricio CF, playing a haunting melody on a tarka, a wooden flute indigenous to the area, as barefoot company members, dressed in loose tan garments, dance like forest spirits.

Co-directors Jeff Colangelo and David Lozano hit their stride when Aki enters, masterfully weaving clarity into an imaginative world where the supple ensemble morphs from creatures to people to magical beings. They shake blue silks and glittery pom poms as suggestions of water and fire.

Her hand-crafted transformations of simple materials into compelling, primitive portrayals of plants and animals awakens compassion for our natural world. That, in turn, underscores the play’s most potent message: that the secret to saving the world lies not in winning battles, but changing hearts and minds.